
Associate Professor @kmc_manipal. Studying lonely flies, aggression, neuroepigenetics. Alumnus @HHMIJanelia @ccmb_csir. Bluesky handle @brainonwings.bsky.social
Manipal, India
Joined October 2008
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Our paper is out in eLife: DANCE. We combine machine learning with accessible hardware to quantify Drosophila social behaviors.
Low-cost behavioral rigs are not a compromise, they are a design philosophy. Accessibility changes the questions we can ask.
elifesciences.org/articles/1…
We are hiring 3 research staff at KMC Manipal: new ICMR project on wearable sleep biomarkers for depression, from Drosophila to patients.
1 Project Research Scientist-I
2 Project Technical Support-III
Apply by 21 Sept 2026
[email protected]
#Drosophila #SciJobs
Three PhD positions open in our Lab, KMC Manipal, (2026–27).
Projects: social isolation & neurogenomics | wearable sensors & anxiety | neuro-immune regulation of behavior.
Tools: Drosophila genetics, transcriptomics, DANCE (eLife 2025).
See flyer for details.
In behavioral neuroscience, more assays do not always clarify a question.
Clearer experimental structure often does.
In behavioral work, design choices upstream shape everything downstream.
We thank the funding support by @DBTIndia and @ANRFIndia and @kmc_manipal @MAHE_Manipal for infrastructural support.
We acknowledge the co-authors for the sustained effort in validating the pipeline across various environments.
All code, hardware schematics, and analysis pipelines are open-source and available on GitHub: github.com/agrawallab/DANCE
Tool building often moves the field faster than incremental experiments. I learned this from @LoogerL whose approach to designing new tools shaped how I think about neuroscience.
Good to meet 3 former trainees who were visiting Manipal. All of them have been in their current labs for over a year now and it was nice to hear how they are doing.
More than a decade in and I still love how a tiny behavioral shift can open up an entire genetic mechanism. That moment when a puzzle suddenly falls into place never gets old. Glad to have students who chase those moments with the same curiosity!
Closing soon, 🎓 Calling #Masters graduates in Biological Sciences with National Fellowships! Join us at @ManipalUni to study aggression, sleep & neurodegeneration in Drosophila.
🚀 We’re hiring! Two fully funded PhD positions in Neuroscience & Behavior at the Agrawal Lab, Centre for Molecular Neurosciences, @MAHE_Manipal . 🧬🐛
National Fellowship holders encouraged.
🔬 #PhDOpening #Neuroscience #Drosophila #AcademicTwitter
🚀 We’re hiring! Two fully funded PhD positions in Neuroscience & Behavior at the Agrawal Lab, Centre for Molecular Neurosciences, @MAHE_Manipal . 🧬🐛
National Fellowship holders encouraged.
🔬 #PhDOpening #Neuroscience #Drosophila #AcademicTwitter
Huge thanks to @MIRM_blr & @SvetaKotak for organizing & hosting me! Loved the audience’s engaging questions, interdisciplinary discussions like these drive innovation! #RegenerativeMedicine #ML #Neuroscience
🧠🪰 Thrilled to host @PavanAgrawalLab at MIRM for a brilliant talk on decoding social stress in Drosophila using a low-cost ML toolkit!
Great insights into how fruit flies can model complex behaviors. Students loved it! @SvetaKotak #Neurobiology #FlyResearch #Drosophila
Pavan Agrawal retweeted
One frame.
A Christian journalist.
A Muslim soldier.
A Hindu pilot.
No slogans. No hate. Just India.
Different faiths. One flag. One mission.
This is India 🇮🇳 where diversity speaks, defends and soars.
#IncredibleIndia #UnityInDiversity #IndiaForPeace #IndiaPakistan #IndiaPakistanConflict #IndiaPakistan
@adgpi @IAF_MCC @SudarshanNewsTV
Pavan Agrawal retweeted
Excited to share the first preprint of our lab. Here we created a robust mouse model of #Parkinsons by injecting AAV6-α-synuclein & PFFs into the substantia nigra. This model recapitulates key features of PD, enabling mechanistic & therapeutic studies.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
🪰 We're thrilled to kick off the year ✨with a new preprint from our lab: 'DANCE – An Open-Source Analysis Pipeline and Low-Cost Hardware to Quantify Aggression and Courtship in Drosophila.' Let’s dive in! 🧵
#DANCE #innovation #ScienceTwitter #AIML #ML biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
We welcome your feedback! 🪰👏 A huge shoutout to the incredible team including first authors @r_saiprathap @neurodey and coauthors @AnsariFaizah @TvainK @manohar_nani @PallaviPra54881 and others!
We are grateful for the funding support from @DBTIndia to make this work possible. Huge thanks to the support from our institution @KMC_manipal @KMC_Socialmedia @MAHE_Manipal














